Thesis advisor: Lisa Sowle Cahill / Contrary to current transhumanist, medical, and cultural perspectives that aging is something solely to lament or even eradicate, this work explores the meaning of aging and death from the perspective of Christian theology, particularly within the schema of St. Augustine and Karl Barth. Both authors describe the complexity of aging in terms of our curse and calling as creatures aimed at participation in God through union with Christ. Locating Christology as central to our understanding of aging illuminates the ways in which the God revealed in Christ enters our humanity, sharing in our vulnerability, dependency, frailty, and even passivity. By turning to the incarnation, Christ's nature and work not only give us future hope, but transforms the daily aging experience - both active and passive waiting within our present, temporal reality for aging individuals and their surrounding communities. By maintaining union with God through contemplation and action, Christ dignifies our status as receptive and active agents. Thus, building from these two authors, I argue that aging serves as a sign and preparation for Sabbath rest by which aging persons might enact virtue through their specific vocation before God. Likewise, those persons surrounding the aging are called to enact virtues that reciprocally respond through interdependent communities that give and receive in union with Christ. Chapter One opens with preliminary questions on the meaning of death and aging while Chapter Two delineates Augustine's view on these realities as a result of the fall and original sin. However, even in Augustine's negative view of death and aging, he highlights the good in the soul/body relation and resurrected bodies. His position legitimizes grief and the human emotions, thus offering an ethics of compassion in loss. Finally, I constructively locate the positive view of aging and death is its sign and preparation for eternal Sabbath rest. Chapter Three considers Barth's analysis of death and aging as both negative and positive, evil and good through his dialectical lens. While death is a sign of judgment, finitude constitutes human identity as good in our temporal end. His ethics mirrors his anthropology in protecting life while accepting limits. He ends by describing the three stages of life including youth, middle age, and old age as composing our vocation. Each stage includes our call before God that legitimizes agency for the old as well as interdependent relationships. Chapters Four and Five explore the Christology of Augustine and Barth. Christ's divine and human natures bring together wisdom and knowledge for Augustine in Chapter Four. Aging persons grow in wisdom and knowledge through contemplation and action in union with Christ. Not only does union with Christ become the foundation for moral agency, but Christ also achieves the benefits for aging persons through his incarnation and atoning work. Christ experiences psychological anguish and forsakenness before God as the Totus Christus. Aging persons also receive the benefits of Christ's person and work that reverses the consequences of aging and death. Chapter Five claims that participation in Christ serves as the key to understanding Barth's Church Dogmatics. God's movement to humanity and our movement to God are embodied in the hypostatic union. Here we see Christ's active agency in his divine humility/obedience through the incarnation and atoning work. Christ's passive agency or human response perfectly embodies gratitude, prayer, and obedience through union with the Spirit in fulfilling his vocation in time. Moreover, in congruence with the work of W.H. Vanstone, Jesus' passive agency that receives the activity of the world legitimizes dignity and worth for those aging stages of life involving decline and dependence. Aging persons are agents who are active and passive, giving and receiving through a mixture of contemplation (prayer) and activity in union with Christ. Finally, Chapter Six synthesizes the Christology and participation present in the theologies of Augustine and Barth as the foundation for a moral virtue theory as it applies to aging persons and their surrounding communities. By emphasizing union with Christ in Augustine's virtue theory and union with Christ in Barth's morality of `vocation,' I argue moral agents are contemplative/acting persons intended for union with God. By receiving and giving in relationship with God and others, aging persons and their communities embody virtues that reciprocally benefit one another. Virtues for the aging include humility, gratitude, generosity, wisdom, prudence, memory, friendship, fortitude, and hope. Virtues for those communities surrounding aging persons entail respect, justice, mercy, and love. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: John R. Sachs / Catholic theology asserts that the human person is the unity of the physical body and the spiritual soul. Several important doctrinal documents of the Church, a number of liturgical texts, and Catholic practice—particularly in relation to the deceased—express this theological anthropology. Developments in biblical studies over the last century and advances in modern science, particularly in the field of neuroscience, have led theologians to raise several questions regarding the makeup of personhood, especially the role of the human soul. These inquires have posed challenges to longstanding Catholic anthropological understandings of the person. / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

For both John Zizioulas (1931), prominent Greek theologian, and Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948), renowned Russian religious philosopher, freedom is the question of ontology, i.e., freedom is about absolute otherness. Since to be is to act, and because to act means to create, we are only as long as we are capable of creating a radically unique reality. Being unique, our creation appears to every other person, including God, as a new reality. However, theistic theology claims that God added nothing to Himself by the creation of the world. Since according to this scenario human person cannot add anything to Being, we cannot speak about her ontological freedom. The doctrine of the divine image seems to be incompatible with the theistic concept of the divine omnipotence. Inquiry into the human freedom is therefore inevitably intertwined with the question of how God is God. Zizioulas's concept of the divine omnipotence does not envisage a space of freedom that God provides for human person from which she could create surplus in being. The French philosopher Etienne Gilson is therefore right when he writes that 'homo faber can never become homo creator because, having only a received being he cannot produce what he himself is not.' Berdyaev on the other hand locates the origin of our being in the Bottomless freedom or the Ungrund. The Bottomless freedom is Godhead from which both freedom of the divine Persons and that of the human person originate. Berdyaev explains that person can never create another person (something that is possible only for God). However, because person in spite of being created is not causally determined by the Creator, she can create her radically unique reality and thus realize her ontological freedom. Clearly, homo faber can never become homo creator (creator of other personalities), but this does not preclude person's power to create surplus in being and to be homo theurgos.

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Regent College, 2005. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-118).

This paper compares the theology and praxis of Canadian Mennonite giving to the biblical texts of Paul’s collection for Jerusalem, particularly 1 and 2 Corinthians. It is based on interviewing Mennonite donors and fundraisers, and using the resulting issues about giving to probe the Pauline texts for practical details about asking for money and donating money. The paper suggests how Pauline theology and praxis might further inform giving and fundraising in the Mennonite church.

The soteriology of the English 14th century mystic Julian of Norwich moves in the direction of a hope for universal salvation. The ground for this hope is established through Julian’s appropriation of the doctrine of the soul’s creation in the image of God, the imago dei. Previous studies have primarily focussed on Augustine’s influence on Julian’s use of the imago dei doctrine. While this has been fruitful, in order to better grasp the nuances of Julian’s anthropology and soteriology, it is essential to also attend to Cistercian influences. In particular, William of St. Thierry’s notion of the will that remains godly in spite of sin and Aelred of Rievaulx’s writing on friendship provide important background to the development of Julian’s soteriology. Interestingly, Julian very rarely explicitly mentions the term image of God. However, in her use of the Middle English word kynd, Julian clearly invokes the doctrine of the imago dei. Further, the doctrine of the imago dei powerfully informs her imagination such that the trope of image may be seen behind important theological developments such as the correspondence between the human and the divine and her notions of what is potentially occurring in the process of contemplation. Close attention to the image tropes that structure Julian’s contemplation and her various usages of the word kynd reveals the complexity of Julian’s adaptation of the doctrine of the imago dei and elucidates the ground of her soteriology.

This paper compares the theology and praxis of Canadian Mennonite giving to the biblical texts of Paul’s collection for Jerusalem, particularly 1 and 2 Corinthians. It is based on interviewing Mennonite donors and fundraisers, and using the resulting issues about giving to probe the Pauline texts for practical details about asking for money and donating money. The paper suggests how Pauline theology and praxis might further inform giving and fundraising in the Mennonite church.

The soteriology of the English 14th century mystic Julian of Norwich moves in the direction of a hope for universal salvation. The ground for this hope is established through Julian’s appropriation of the doctrine of the soul’s creation in the image of God, the imago dei. Previous studies have primarily focussed on Augustine’s influence on Julian’s use of the imago dei doctrine. While this has been fruitful, in order to better grasp the nuances of Julian’s anthropology and soteriology, it is essential to also attend to Cistercian influences. In particular, William of St. Thierry’s notion of the will that remains godly in spite of sin and Aelred of Rievaulx’s writing on friendship provide important background to the development of Julian’s soteriology. Interestingly, Julian very rarely explicitly mentions the term image of God. However, in her use of the Middle English word kynd, Julian clearly invokes the doctrine of the imago dei. Further, the doctrine of the imago dei powerfully informs her imagination such that the trope of image may be seen behind important theological developments such as the correspondence between the human and the divine and her notions of what is potentially occurring in the process of contemplation. Close attention to the image tropes that structure Julian’s contemplation and her various usages of the word kynd reveals the complexity of Julian’s adaptation of the doctrine of the imago dei and elucidates the ground of her soteriology.

Work occupies a significant part of our lives, and yet it is often not given sufficient attention. Certainly there is much consideration given to finding a career, and succeeding in work, but not enough to how our work affects and defines us as human beings. The default Christian position has been that we must find our vocation, what we have been called by God to do, and that will result in satisfying meaningful labour. However, vocation has not necessarily led us to be more satisfied in our work, or to solve the many issues related to work. This thesis suggests that we may find a new method of understanding our work by returning to some important themes of Christian faith. The resurrection of Jesus Christ gives us a hope for the future, and allows us to reconsider our place within the narrative of history. Along with resurrection, the hope of new creation gives us a goal to work towards and a future existence which we may anticipate in the present. This anticipation of the future can change how we work, and give us reason to reconsider our understanding of our work in the present.

Luke 8:1-3 is the only explicit indicator in scripture that Jesus receives financial provision during his ministry. Interestingly, the donors are wealthy women. From a social historical perspective who are these women who travel with Jesus and the Twelve? Is it possible for women in first century Palestine to have finances at their disposal? What is the significance of Luke recording that women provide for Jesus out of their own means and how does this square with Luke's understanding of discipleship as a call to leave everything? The thesis at hand explores the answers to these questions using a social historical and narrative critical approach in an attempt to recognize the implications and significance of the pericope for the women in 8:2-3, Jesus and his ministry,and Luke and his audience. In summary, it finds that the actions of the women as traveling companions of a rabbi and financial providers, but not patrons, reflect a radical departure from the religious, social, and political norms of early first century society. They play a significant role both historically and within the narrative as committed disciples who remain with Jesus throughout his ministry from Galilee to Jerusalem and as witnesses to the crucifixion, entombment, and resurrection.